Years ago I worked with a real estate broker who had a contract with a large national chain of movie theaters. She would always be flying all over the damned country to scout new locations for the ever growing theater chain. The last trip that she took while I was at the company was to the Rio Grande Valley. So this gave me an opportunity to learn a little about the most southern cities in Texas, but just enough to be dangerous.

The area just north of the border with Mexico known as the Rio Grande Valley includes the cities of Edinburg, McAllen, Weslaco and Harlingen. If you include the cities just south of the border in Mexico, this area has a substantial population of over 2 million people. Harlingen is the easternmost city of the four, at the intersection of Highway 77 and Highway 83. This appears to be the retail hub of the valley, with retail sales per capita above $8,000. This is a very healthy number and made the area very attractive to the movie theater executives.

There is so much shit going on when real estate is involved, that so many people don’t even realize is going on, that It can and does, take years and years of research and meetings before any shovel (or other heavy duty equipment) hits the ground to start the actual building on the site. I learned so much at that job. If the market hadn’t taken such a fucking dive back in the fucked up year or 2007 I just might have continued on with that type of career path, with that particular company or gone out on my own by now.. Guess we will never know.

Today we toured a manufacturing plant that had been shut down by their home office and put up for sale. The building is fucking huge and was used to mill cotton. Since the southern states produce an incredible amount of cotton, it made sense years ago to locate the mills close to where the raw materials were produced. However, the rising cost of American labor is the reason the company shut down this plant.

One of the big distractions for a new buyer interested in this former cotton mill property is that all the mill equipment was left sitting on the production floor. This shit is massive and had to be incredibly expensive to put into place. It is large, heavy and complicated to configure and maintain. Supposedly there is not much of a market for used equipment like this. It find it strange that the company found it cheaper and easier to buy brand fucking new equipment for the new plant facility they built in Mexico than to break down and move this shit to the new plant. It was easier to just walk away from the existing crap and leave it here for the new owner to deal with disposing of it. Once again, this is an example of how the world’s economic situation is totally fucked up.

Last night I somehow ended up on a website that actually lists what the prisoners on Death Row request for the last meal before being executed. What a creepy site that was, I can’t imagine why people would want to spend their time and effort compiling information like that. And some of the links off of that site were pretty odd also, not the type of shit that I would want to spend my time reading about, that is for sure.

It just fucking amazes me what excites and interests people. I don’t mind a good horror story, but I can do without watching one at the movies. I really don’t get what the fuck people get out of this shit. Give me a good comedy or an old fashioned love story any day. The world is full of violence and total madness and to think that there are people out there capitalizing on this type of violence just drives me crazy.

And now that we can find and see just about anything we can think of on the Internet I don’t think that we have any boundaries left. And don’t even get me started on all things that are going on with the ever increasing use of Facebook. I’ll save that for another day.

I was raised and have always lived by the motto “never pay full price for anything”, as many of us have and this policy is spreading like wildfire all throughout the country. With the economy not getting any better, in fact it is getting worse for all the people that I know and love. It’s so bad that I actually can’t think of a single soul that I know that is doing OK, much less doing all right or doing well, or even getting better mind you. That just really sucks. I’d give anything to have a conversation with someone that is on the positive side, but right they are full of sorrow and heartache all thanks to our government, thank you very much!

This fucking election is really getting folks stirred up. I don’t even go onto Facebook anymore because of all the bull shit and mud slinging that is going on there concerning the election. I have been struggling with deciding who to vote for this November. I am hoping that the up and coming televised debates will help me make a decision by then. Both parties have good and bad in them and as far as I’m concerned they are both full of shit. I hate having to decide which is the lessor of two evils. It just doesn’t seem right to me. But I am going to vote, I promise you that.

I fucking love the music festivals that go on every summer. They are just about to start this year and I cannot wait to go. Memphis in May begins soon and we are all going in one large group. This is one of my fucking favorite festivals out of all of them. We have decided to camp instead of staying at a hotel since two of my friends have campers and the rest of us have tents to sleep in. I will take my tent, but since it is just me, I will probably not have to use it. That is fine, because I have some friends who don’t have a tent and they will more than likely use mine.

Camping will save us money on a lot of food and such. We can make breakfast each morning and dinner at night. The only food we will have to buy will be lunch where ever we happen to be at the time. Since the festival is about music and art and stuff, there is no telling where we might be. I am so stoked to be able to go this year, because last year I didn’t make it to this festival. I cannot wait!